BUBO Listing News

What's the most difficult bird to see on a particular list? We have dramatically improved the performance of the "blockers" facility in BUBO Listing so that is now possible to see, in a matter of seconds, those species that have been seen by the fewest listers.

For example, there are currently five species on British lists that have only been recorded by single observers. Interestingly these are all American vagrants and include such megas as American Kestrel, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker and Magnolia Warbler.

To view blockers for any list, just go to View All Lists as normal but ensure that you check 'Blockers' rather than 'Rankings'. Clicking on a blocker species will show you who has recorded it and where.

In recent weeks we have been working to make it easier for us to add new location/regions and authorities for you to record your lists against. The main difference that users will notice is the new location selector within "View All Lists" and "Create New List". Instead of a short list of locations, plus a separate drop-down of UK counties, we have now introduced a hierarchical tree linking all potential listing locations to one another. The "location tree" will include anything from the scale of the world, down to the scale of individual sites (coming soon). Locations can be selected either by:

Browsing through the tree and clicking the required location, or

Typing the name (or part of the name) of the required location into the adjacent box, or

Selecting (or typing part of the name of) a location from the 'popular locations' box

We have also taken the opportunity to bring all of the existing authorities up to date, and have introduced new authorities for Ireland and the Channel Islands.

The range of locations currently included is not complete. To save on clutter, we intend to populate the tree gradually, and largely following the requests of BUBO Listers. Only locations that anyone wishes to record a list against will be included. Therefore, if you wish to add a list for a location that is not currently included then please get in touch with us and let us know as much information about the location as possible (e.g. name, where it is, description of boundaries). We'll try to add it as soon as possible. Some of our immediate plans based on listers requests are to add South America, Australia, India, Iceland, Connecticut, etc. When we have completed several of these large regions and countries we will then introduce individual site lists.

We have also decided to make the "View All Lists" functionality available via the home page to anyone, not just to registered users. Given that BUBO Listing is designed to be entirely transparent, we felt that this was in keeping with our ethos and might also attract more users to get involved.

As always, please send us your thoughts and ideas for potential improvements. In particular, as we are making a number of changes to the way BUBO Listing works, please let us know as soon as possible if you find any apparent bugs that might have crept in. Finally, don't forget to let us know if there are any new locations you wish to record lists against.

One of the authorities used by BUBO Listing for Britain and Ireland is the checklist produced by Birdwatch magazine. Originally published in 2006, a second edition has been produced by Dominic Mitchell and Keith Vinicombe in the April 2008 edition. The changes incorporated in this new edition are now reflected within BUBO Listing.

The main differences are as follows:

Pacific Diver added

Yellow-nosed Albatross added

Great Blue Heron added

Northern Harrier split

Amur Falcon removed

Wilson's Snipe added

Brown Skua removed, but replaced by 'Southern skua' Stercorarius sp. (we have not included this grouping within BUBO Listing)

Glaucous-winged Gull added

Long-billed Murrelet added

Eastern Yellow Wagtail split

Olive-tree Warbler added

Canada Warbler added to the appendix of species recorded in Ireland but not Britain.

In addition, the ordering of the gulls and the Tringa sandpipers and allies has been altered and there are a few changes to latin names. Finally, Orphean Warbler from the first edition has been replaced by Western Orphean Warbler in this second edition.

BUBO Listing encourages British birders to consider making use of the Birdwatch authority in addition to a BOU list. Remember you can easily convert one to the other in 'Create New List'.